LEXING: Linguists in Industry, Non-profits, and Government

2027 LEXING Theme: "Now What?"

The anthropologist Riall Nolan—international development professional, associate provost, and expert on practice careers—once told me that every research project should include a “what,” a “so what,” and a “now what.” That is, it’s not enough to have findings that say what you learned and a discussion that makes a case for why it matters. Our work should lead to action, the next steps that result from the knowledge we create.

In that moment, Riall was thinking on the scale of one project, but we might use the same model for a research program, a professional community, or even an entire discipline. After two years of LEXING conference tracks and over a decade of the Linguists Beyond Academia SIG (now called the LEXING SIG), multiple Linguistics Career Launches, 80+ episodes of Linguistics Careercast, and two books by Anna Marie Trester, we know the wide range of occupations that linguists find across industries, and we know why this diversity of applications is important to us as practitioners and to linguistics as a community. Rather than repeating the same conversation, this year’s LEXING asks, now what? What action can we take—as individuals, in our institutions, through the Society, on behalf of the discipline—not only to promote the diverse professional manifestations of linguistic science, but also to use linguistic insights to advance human flourishing?

To do justice to a question of this magnitude will require participants with a range of perspectives and positionalities. We welcome participation from:

Linguists engaged in industry, nonprofit, government, freelance, advocacy, educational, and other professional settings, whether currently employed or not
Graduate students and other academics exploring diverse professional pathways and asking difficult questions about the future of the discipline
Department chairs, program coordinators, administrators, and institutional leaders positioned to enact material change
Collaborators from adjacent disciplines and professions interested in the practical applications of linguistic knowledge

LEXING is more than a conversation about careers. It is a space for serious reflection on translational linguistics, public engagement, interdisciplinary collaboration, institutional change, and the evolving role of linguistic expertise in our world.

daniele ginsberg, phd, Montgomery College, LEXING conference chair

Call for Proposals

The LSA is seeking submissions for the third meeting of LEXING: A symposium for Linguists in Industry, Non-profits, and Government (and other sectors), to be held as a track within the 2027 Annual Meeting in San Francisco, which will take place in person January 6-9. LEXING will consist of a series of linked sessions highlighting insights from and expertise engaged beyond traditional academic settings.

Strong LEXING submissions are concrete, reflective, accessible, and grounded in practice. We especially value proposals that connect linguistic insight to real-world challenges, institutional change, collaboration, design, policy, education, advocacy, technology, or lived human experience.

This call for proposals covers 4 categories of sessions and presentations at LEXING:

Fishbowl conversations
20-minute case studies
5-minute lightning talks
Posters

Submitters should be aware that, unlike in the LSA’s academic program, the organizers of LEXING will provide accepted presenters with additional curation and support, especially for Fishbowl and Lightning Talk proposals. Because some LEXING session types will be new to many linguists, we aim to work collaboratively to provide support to ensure the success of each session.

Categories of Presentations

Fishbowl Conversations

Collaborative discussions built around shared problems, questions, and experiences

In contrast to an academic organized session in which each speaker presents their own research, fishbowls are lively discussions focused on a given topic, taking place among a group of participants with diverse perspectives on an identified topic. The fishbowl format is a way of structuring a conversation on a single topic with a larger group than would typically be possible. The fishbowl room contains five chairs in the center and a second, larger circle of chairs around them. When the fishbowl panel begins, four central chairs are occupied by the panelists and the moderator, and one chair is empty. The audience is seated in the outer circle of chairs. At any point, an audience member who has something to add to the conversation can indicate this by moving to the empty chair in the center, from which they can naturally join the conversation at a relevant point or be invited to do so by the moderator. There must be an empty chair in the center at all times, so when the fifth chair becomes occupied, one of the people seated in the center gets up and moves to the outer circle, leaving an empty chair that someone else will eventually occupy, and so on. The original panelists thus seed a conversation and gradually rotate out of it, although they may also rotate back in as the conversation continues. Importantly, there are no "questions from the audience" in the fishbowl format: if someone seated in the outer circle has a question, the moderator urges them to join the inner circle for a while, encouraging back-and-forth discussion of complex issues. People seated in the outer circle may remain audience members who don't participate, but it is expected that about half of a 30-person room would likely take a turn in the inner circle at some point.

Fishbowls are well suited to topics where many people in the room are likely to have relevant contributions rather than a few "sages on the stage" presenting information. You’re not giving a lecture; you’re starting a conversation. Potential topics include questions of praxis, such as interdisciplinary collaboration, career development, and the use of particular research tools and methods, as well as critical engagements that problematize aspects of the discipline and/or the profession and "talking shop" among practitioners with varying experiences on a topic. Past topics include:

What Linguists Know and Your Team Still Doesn’t (2026)
Parenting, PhD, and Public Work: Surviving and Thriving Beyond Academia (2026)
Connecting linguistics to DEI and advocacy (2025)
Power, Inequality and Tech: What Linguistics Offers (2025)
Linguistics Careers in Generative AI: How Can We Create Opportunities? (2025)
Strategies for career growth and promotion beyond your first (and second) job outside of academia (2025)

Case Studies

Practice-centered talks focused on real-world impact

Case studies are scheduled in the LSA’s standard 20-minute talk + 10-minute Q&A format, but rather than centering research methods and findings, they are about real-world impact. Talk about a project that you completed (not just a concept), get into the messy missteps and negotiations that the work involves (not just the polished overview), share the lessons you learned from it (not just the successes), and propose ways in which it might apply to other settings (not just your own).

5 Minute Lightning Talks

Fast-paced, accessible, story-driven presentations

Inspired by the popular Five-Minute Linguist event, as well as “Ignite” and “PechaKucha” events that take place in other settings, this event features industry, government, nonprofit, and freelance linguists giving very short, lively, and engaging presentations about their work and perspectives in a manner accessible to the average LSA member.

This year’s lightning talks should respond to the LEXING theme, “Now What?” Presenters should talk about a time they put linguistic insights into practice or translated them for nonspecialist audiences. Submitters should be mindful that a five-minute talk is not an abbreviated twenty-minute talk; the format works best when it explores a single claim or idea in a fast-paced, visual way.

Posters

Works in progress, emerging ideas, and conversational exchange

A poster session is an unmatched opportunity to share work in progress, have brief conversations, and get targeted feedback from a wide cross-section of LSA meeting attendees. It can be a bit of a “miscellaneous” category, but don’t think of it as a consolation prize; we welcome submissions from linguists, especially those employed outside of higher education settings, whose material does not fit neatly into the fishbowl, case study, or lightning talk requirements, and who are interested in using the rapid-fire, conversational poster session format to its fullest potential.

Important Dates

June 2, 2026: Submission portal opens
July 2, 2026: Submission deadline for LEXING
Fall: LEXING acceptance decisions are announced
September: Early bird registration begins
November: Regular registration begins
December: Late registration begins
January 6-9, 2027: The LSA Annual Meeting takes place

Submission Instructions

Submissions will open on June 2 and close on July 2, 2026. Acceptance decisions will be announced fall 2026.

Fishbowls

Proposals should thoroughly yet succinctly explain the problem to be posed and its relevance to LEXING participants, and provide names for a potential facilitator and up to 4 potential initial participants, along with the perspective/expertise each brings. Please also note whether any participants in your proposal have experience with the fishbowl format (such as at a prior LEXING or at the LingComm 2021 or 2023 conferences); this is not required but will help us anticipate how we can best support you and the success of your session. The suggested word limit for fishbowl proposals is 200 words, excluding information about the facilitator and participants.

If you have an idea that you think might be a good fit for a fishbowl, but aren’t sure who might be a good facilitator or participants, that’s okay. You can reach out to us before you submit to talk about whether your idea is a good fit for the format, and if your topic is accepted, we’ll work with you to flesh out the remaining details. If we receive several proposals addressing similar topics, we may suggest the submitters work together on a single fishbowl.

Case Studies (20-Minute Talks) & Posters

For this track, we will accept LEXING-relevant abstracts that follow the standard LSA guidelines for content development, which can be found here, as well as less traditional content ranging from case studies or abstracts that center application to products or processes at scale, to combining business with scientific considerations, the development of linguistically-informed ideas or insights over time, or discussions of other occasions in the professional life of the presenter when a linguistically-informed approach came into play.

5 Minute Lightning Talks

The maximum proposal length for a 5 Minute Lightning talk is 300 words. In your submission, describe your Aha! moment and how it impacted you. Submissions will be evaluated on their relevance to linguistics and to the session theme, how compelling it would be for the LEXING audience, how engaging the storytelling style is, and evidence that the presenter is prepared to stay within the 5-minute limit.

Technical Submission Requirements

The submitting author must be a member of the Linguistic Society. Nonmembers may join here.
Any member may submit one single-author Case Study abstract (or be the corresponding author on a multiple-author talk) and one single-authored 5 Minute Lightning Talk abstract (or be the corresponding author on a multiple-author talk). There are no limits on the number of times someone can be a co-author on submissions that have another person as the corresponding author. Submissions to the regular LSA program do not count toward this limit. There is also no limit on the number of times someone can appear in a Fishbowl proposal.
Presentations must be delivered by one or more individuals listed as author(s) on the originally submitted abstract.
Presenters must pre-register for the meeting.
Authors may not submit identical abstracts for presentation at LEXING and at the general LSA program or a meeting of one of the co-locating Sister Societies. Authors who do so will have both abstracts removed from consideration. Authors may submit substantially different abstracts for presentation at LEXING and at the LSA meeting or a co-locating Sister Society meeting.

Authors are encouraged to consult the LSA Guidelines for Inclusive Language when drafting their abstract and identifying examples to illustrate the phenomenon under discussion.

Abstract Format Guidelines

Abstracts must be submitted in PDF format.
The main text for the abstract must fit on one 8.5x11 page. An optional second page may be used for the presentation of linguistic examples, plots, figures, tables, other diagrams, and references, or these can be integrated into the 1-page abstract. Margins may be no smaller than 1/2 inch and font no smaller than 10 points.
Make sure to anonymize your submission. Do not identify yourself by name or by citations in the abstract text or in the file name.
Abstracts that do not conform to the format guidelines will not be considered.

LEXING Proposal Submissions are now closed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the organizers of LEXING?

The organizing committee for LEXING is made up of Jon Coltz, Nancy Frishberg, Bethany Gardner, daniele ginsberg, Hadas Kotek, Alex Johnston, and Margaret Vitullo. Jon, Nancy, Bethany, and Hadas are linguists who work in different professions outside academia, including corporate training, consumer research, the tech industry, and science communication. Alex and daniele both work in higher education–daniele as a community college professor and Alex in a teaching / administrative / career management role–and both have extensive professional experience in the nonprofit and consulting worlds. Margaret is a PhD sociologist who also works outside academia as the Executive Director of the LSA.

Who is the intended audience for LEXING?

We welcome participants with a wide range of linguistic backgrounds, including those whose engagement with linguistics has developed through professional practice, interdisciplinary work, advocacy, education, or community experience. Key constituencies include:

Linguists engaged in industry, nonprofit, government, freelance, advocacy, educational, and other professional settings, whether currently employed or not
Graduate students and other academics exploring diverse professional pathways and asking difficult questions about the future of the discipline
Department chairs, program coordinators, administrators, and institutional leaders positioned to enact material change
Collaborators from adjacent disciplines and professions interested in the practical applications of linguistic knowledge

Our goal is to foster a community of career linguists, embracing newcomers and easing career transition points so that leaving academia need not entail leaving the broader linguistic community––but also providing support beyond that point, so we can learn from each other and stay connected to our roots even as we grow in different directions in our careers.

I am not sure I have anything to submit, can I still attend LEXING?

Yes! Everyone is welcome to attend. If you are an early career linguist considering diverse career paths, you are welcome to participate as an audience member, even if you have nothing to submit. If you are a linguist working outside academia, we recognize that you may not be engaged in research or in linguistics or language-related work on a daily basis; nonetheless we are convinced that you will both contribute to and gain from attending and you are very welcome!

We have designed the Call for Papers to allow an easy path for those who may require an accepted presentation in order to receive employer sponsorship to attend; anyone with non-academic work experience will have something to contribute to fishbowls, and many will have Now What? moments for lightning talks.

I submitted an abstract to the regular program but I now think it would fit better at LEXING. Can I submit the same work to LEXING, too?

Please do not submit the same work to both tracks. If you would like an existing submission to the general LSA program to instead be considered for LEXING, please indicate that in the submission portal.

I would like to submit an abstract for LEXING but need more information to navigate my company's internal approval process, and/or I expect to need more time that the current deadline allows.

We are happy to answer additional questions and/or work with you to navigate internal deadlines. Please reach out to us as meetings@lsadc.org and be sure to put LEXING in the subject line.

Can LEXING presenters submit papers to the LSA proceedings?

Yes, LEXING presenters are welcome to submit papers that are developed from their talks to the LSA Proceedings. Please be sure to check with your employer concerning any needed clearances or approvals before submitting a paper to the LSA Proceedings. The deadline for submitting to the LSA Annual Meeting Proceedings is generally 2-3 months after the Annual Meeting.

I have questions you haven’t answered here.

Please reach out to us with any questions! We are happy to answer questions and help you think through how to put together a proposal if you are not sure how to proceed. Reach us at meetings@lsadc.org and be sure to put LEXING in the subject line.

Sponsorship Information

We invite corporate and other sponsorships of the LSA Annual Meeting and the newly established LEXING program. Information on sponsorships will be posted shortly. Please check back!